CHATHAM TWP. — Change is coming to the township. There is a new, probably temporary, mayor, and Township Attorney Carl Woodward announced he will retire at the end of the year.

After serving as mayor for four years, Nicole Hagner stepped down at the Dec. 4 Township Committee meeting. The committee unanimously chose Bailey Brower Jr. to fill in as mayor for the balance of the year. Hagner will remain on the committee until the end of the year, when her term expires.

Brower said today that his selection as mayor “is sort of an honorarium … Nicole stepped down as an honor to me and my family.” Brower said he will be the “fourth of the Noe group” to serve the township as its mayor. Louis M. Noe was the first mayor, “Lewis A. Noe served in 1915, Arthur B. Churchill was mayor in the ‘40s.”

A lifelong resident of the township, Brower is the fifth generation of his family to live here. “My children are sixth generation and my grandchildren are seventh generation,” he said, adding that the grandchildren don’t live in town anymore.

A member of the committee for 11 years, two as deputy mayor, Brower said he plans to chair the reorganization meeting in January, but expects to turn the gavel over to whomever the committee elects. His term as a committee member expires at the end of 2014 and, at this point, “I have no inclination to run for another term,” he said. Of course that could change, depending upon who decides to run for committee, he said.

Brower said he has long supported the borough form of government “where people have the right to elect the mayor” instead of the township system in which the mayor is appointed by the committee. “There’s a lot of politics involved” and mayors can and often are changed annually. “It takes a year to learn the job … and an effective mayor should serve at least two or three years running,” he said.

Hagner, who did not run for another term on the committee, said previously that she wanted to spend more time with her daughter, Brooke. She had served nine years on the committee.